Various: Mickie James on Last Rodeo, Scott D’Amore on Reason for Impact PPVs on Fridays, Indies

Impact Wrestling

Oct 5, 2022

Mickie James Comments on Her “Last Rodeo” Career Run

Impact Wrestling held a recent Bound For Glory Press Pass media scrum with Mickie James as one of the guests. One of the topics discussed included James’ thoughts about her current “Last Rodeo” run of her wrestling career.

“I’m still proving something to myself, and I’m a fighter. In my heart, I have always needed to have a reason and a purpose as to why I’m fighting. It’s never just been about going out there and having great matches. It’s about the purpose, and this purpose is just proving that I still belong in that locker room. We have some of the greatest female talent in the world, we really, really do. I believe that our Knockouts Division is one of the strongest divisions our there, and it can go toe-to-toe and rise above any other division. That’s not me being biased, but it’s me saying that the opportunities that are given to the women and the types of matches that are given to the women on television, for us, it’s ground-breaking. We get to do some really, really incredible stuff, and we get a lot of time to do it. I think with that being said, it’s hard why it’s so important to me to prove that I still belong because these are harder-hitting matches and longer matches.
I really wanna test myself, and I said this against the best of the best, and that’s why, from Gisele [Shaw], who’s one of the newest knockouts on the roster, and she’s got a hell of a lot to prove for herself, and it was important to test myself against her, and then Mia because there is so much history and I do respect her on so many levels. I know that it’s going to be a tough battle and a tough match, but I don’t want to give myself any excuses. I don’t want to go easy on myself because the matches are only gonna get harder and harder. With Mia, I don’t think she’s gonna go lightly on me but she respects me and she does love me, whereas there are other ladies in the locker room and perhaps other locker rooms that don’t love me so much. They could be pulling out different stops that I may not expect, so I’m just looking at, right now, what’s in front of me, and that’s this weekend, and I hope Mia brings everything that she has because I want to have this last rodeo be some of the greatest body of my work, honesty.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Scott D’Amore Comments on Why Impact Moved Their PPV Events to Fridays

A recent episode of the Wrestling Observer’s Punch-Out podcast had Impact Wrestling Executive Vice President Scott D’Amore as the guest. One of the topics discussed included D’Amore revealing the reasons why Impact decided to move their monthly pay-per-view events from their traditional Saturday dates to Friday dates instead.

“We want to try some different things. It is a busy night, but one of the things is the way people consume content differently in this day and age. You see sometimes what we think is competition isn’t as much competition as we really think because people are going to watch it. This isn’t as much of a live content consuming world as it used to be and there is great stuff out there on Friday nights. I’ll be totally honest with you, we may turn around and look at this in a handful of months and go, ‘You know what, Friday wasn’t the day to do.’ But it was one of those things where it’s not completely unheard of. I mean, there have been PPVs on Friday nights and there is so much competition on every night of the week these days that we looked at it and said, ‘You know what, Friday and Saturday are great nights to block for live events, let’s take a look and let’s see how the Friday night PPVs do.’ In some ways, Friday night is a night we might find that people are already in the wrestling groove and decide they want to DVR SmackDown and Rampage and watch our show. Or watch SmackDown and Rampage and DVR our PPV. They might want to buy and stream it at 11 o’clock at night or turn around and watch it the next day. One thing is we’ve always been open to trying different things. Sometimes you invent Ultimate X and other times you come up with Reverse Battle Royal.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Former WWE wrestler Alicia Fox got engaged this past Monday. The announcement was first made by Fox’s fiance on Instagram.

During a recent interview with Mas Lucha, Andrade El Idolo stated that he recently tried to persuade Lucha Libre AAA talent Hijo del Vikingo to leave the company due to how little they are paying him for someone of his big star and champion status. Andrade stated that he believes del Vikingo is probably making somewhere around $100-$200 per match as AAA Mega Champion and way lower than what low card wrestlers get paid in CMLL. Andrade also stated that he was told that CMLL low card wrestlers make more money than main event wrestlers in AAA. (English translation via LuchaBlog)

Dragon Gate announced that Kagetora recently suffered a partially torn tibial ligaments injury in his right leg. It was also announced that he is currently expected to be out of action for the company for the next one to two months as a result.

New Japan Pro Wrestling recently announced eight matches for the card of their NJPW Strong-themed New Japan Showdown 2022 event on October 16th in Los Angeles, California: